Aside from its new tablet, Sony also predictably announced a few new smartphones: the Xperia T, Xperia V, and Xperia J. You can see from the family shot below what they all look like side by side.

The Xperia T is Sony’s new flagship smartphone, and it was extensively leaked before, just like the Xperia J. The Xperia T was known by its codename Mint for a while. The Sony Xperia V isn’t a device we’ve heard of before, but it’s basically a slightly smaller Xperia T that has added LTE support and is ruggedized.

To add to the confusion (as if the fact that these all look almost identical isn’t confusing enough), the Xperia T will be sold in some markets as the Xperia TX – for no apparent reason.

The Sony Xperia T builds on the design of the Xperia Arc and Arc S from yesteryear, featuring a curved back as you can see. It will have a 4.6-inch 720p HD touchscreen, a 13 MP ‘fast capture’ camera (that can go from sleep to snap in one second) with 1080p Full HD video recording, a secondary front-facing camera capable of 720p HD video, a ‘latest generation’ 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, NFC, and MHL. It will run Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich when it launches. An update to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is promised, but without any hard details. The Sony Xperia T will be available in black, silver, and white.

It certainly looks like Sony hasn’t learned anything from its announcements that took place earlier in the year, and is still following in the footsteps of Sony Ericsson by launching flagship devices running older operating system versions. So those of you who care about timely updates will probably continue to steer clear of Sony’s mobile products.

It’s a bit funny (if not ironic) how Sony mentions that the Xperia T will come with a ‘latest generation’ processor. Funny, because it’s touting this like it’s some extraordinary feat that the company has accomplished. We assume said processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, which has been in other phone makers’ wares for many months now, so it’s nice of Sony to finally join them in 2012 – though bragging about this is odd.

Next up, we have the Sony Xperia V. This has a 4.3-inch 720p HD touchscreen, and the other specs are basically identical to the Xperia T – except the fact that the V has LTE support, and it’s waterproof and dustproof. In fact, Sony claims that it has the “highest levels of dust and water resistance in a smartphone”. The Xperia V will be out in pink, black, and white.

The Sony Xperia J (seen below) is 9.2 mm thin, and comes with a 4-inch 480×854 touchscreen, a 5 MP rear camera, a front-facing camera, and no other details to speak of. It will be out in black, gold, pink, and white – at some point before the end of this year. This doesn’t seem like it’s ready to be launched just yet, so why Sony semi-announced it is beyond us.

The Xperia T will be in stores ‘over the next few weeks’, whatever that means. As for the Xperia V, it will join the Xperia J in launching in the fourth quarter.